


Let It All Go (You'll Be Happier Without It)

by thewolvescalledmehome



Series: Hang On [3]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Car Accidents, Complete, F/M, Jon and the Starks Are Not Related, Jon is an amputee, Jonsa Spring Blossom Challenge, Prosthesis, The Starks dead in canon are dead in this fic, Unspecified Past Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-23
Updated: 2019-03-23
Packaged: 2019-11-28 06:15:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18204611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewolvescalledmehome/pseuds/thewolvescalledmehome
Summary: Jonsa Spring Challenge Day 7: foodIn the weeks following the pool party, Sansa wonders if maybe there's something more between her and Jon. And if there is, is she ready for it?





	Let It All Go (You'll Be Happier Without It)

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry this is a day late! My cold medicine knocked me out yesterday.

“Hey, I…uh. I wanted to say thanks. For earlier,” Jon murmured, leaning across the counter across from her. Sansa sensed the weight in his tone, but she didn’t want to have a heavy conversation. She wanted to keep the lightheartedness they’d had all afternoon.

“For dunking you like I did?” she joked, hoping he would turn them back to easier topics. Jon chuckled.

“Ha, no. For… For coming to get me. I wasn’t going to come, but I’m glad I did.” Sansa noticed how careful he was to keep his eyes from meeting hers. He was looking at something just to the side. She had the urge to tuck her hair behind her ear in case it was sticking out funny. His lack of gaze made her almost as nervous as him staring at her would, so she moved to pass him, patting his arm as she did.

“Good. I’m glad.”

She was a few steps past him when he grabbed her hand.

Sansa immediately felt dread and panic surge through her at the feeling of being grabbed without warning.

“Sansa, wait.”

When she turned back and saw Jon, the feelings lessened. The urge to rip her hand away was no longer there.

“I also wanted to say thanks for how you reacted to my leg. No one besides doctors have seen it before and… And having you be the first one, and react how you did? It… thank you.”

“Of course, Jon,” she murmured, giving his hand a quick squeeze.

She had been looking at their hands, but when she felt his eyes on her face, she forced herself to look up. To look at him.

His grey eyes were the ones she remembered from their childhood, still old beyond his years, the way she suspected they had always been. She remembered once, when she was in the city and regretting every choice she had ever made, she had wondered what it would be like to be with someone like Jon. Someone who didn’t know how to be anything other than kind and gentle. To feel a hand like his holding hers so softly.

 _No, no,_ she reminded herself. She wasn’t thinking about her time in the city anymore.

“I better keep cleaning up.” She detached her hand from his and herself from those memories.

“Oh. Right.”

* * *

It had been nearly a week since Sansa had had her pool party, but whenever she was in the kitchen, all she could think of was the sensation in Jon’s hand in hers.

She expected the feeling of his hand to bring back nightmares from the city, but instead of terror, it filled her with butterflies.

That fact alone had her nervous.

The last time she had feelings like that about someone it had nearly broke her.

She didn’t know if she could do it again.

She didn’t know if she could do it again with Jon.

She knew he would never turn out like any of those men in the city, but she couldn’t bear to lose him either. He was the one person she thought she could consider a friend. Her relationship with Arya was still strained, but she at least had one with her, and Bran. It was only because of Jon that she did.

She couldn’t think of Jon that way, she decided. If she was going to think of him, it would have to be as a proxy for Robb, an older brother. Nothing more.

* * *

Sansa quickly found that this was easier said than done.

Before the pool party, she and Jon had fallen into some sort of routine. They would often text each other meaningless little updates about their days—she would tell him whenever a dog found a home or when she completely burned garlic bread because she got too invested in her show and didn’t hear the timer. He would text her about his work, about the fights Arya and Bran would get into over cereal or the dishwasher, about his PT.

Before Arya and Bran had come back for break, Jon had suggested that they get together for lunch once a week. She suspected he knew that the only time she was around people was at work, and she guessed that before her siblings came back it was the same for him.

The texting, the lunches, it was nice. It reminded her that she wasn’t alone. That she was alive and someone out there cared about her, about her day.

That was until the pool party and the butterflies. Now when his name popped up on her screen, she didn’t feel that dull warmth—she felt nervous, jittery, and flushed. It was the same when they met for lunch. It had been easy conversations, talking mostly about Ghost or her siblings. Safe topics.

Now, as Sansa sat across from him for their weekly lunch, she found herself reading into every comment, every pause, every gesture.

“Sansa? You okay?” Jon asked, pulling her back out of her head.

“Yeah, fine.”

“You’re quiet today.”

Sansa opened her mouth but she couldn’t very well say _I can’t get you holding my hand out of my head and I don’t know how I feel about that._ She certainly couldn’t say _that Saturday was the most human contact I’ve had in over two years._  

She shrugged instead.

“I think my allergies are acting up,” she answered finally, hoping Jon didn’t remember that it was Robb, and not her, who had allergies. The way his eye twitched told her he did, but he didn’t call her on it.

She could feel his eyes lingering on her, no doubt looking for more of an explanation for why she’s been so weird since the pool party, but she couldn’t provide one. Not without revealing why she would panic at any sort of romantic feelings. And while she knew Jon was nothing like those other men, he saw her as whole. She didn’t want to change that.

“It’s okay. I understand,” he mumbled after a few minutes of them scraping their forks against their plates in a show of eating.

“You do?” she asked, surprised. How could be possibly know? It wasn’t as if she divulged all of those sinister and despicable details to either of her siblings. Was she that obvious? Could he read it on her face? Her movements?

“You’ve been weird since the pool party. I can put two and two together.” Sansa heard bitterness in his tone, but that couldn’t be right. Could it?

His tone and comment suddenly clicked.

Him holding her hand wasn’t the only thing that happened the day of the pool party.

“Oh, Jon, no,” she rushed, dropping her fork and reaching across the table to take ahold of his hand. “I promise it’s not what you’re thinking.”

“Then what is it? Because that’s the only thing I can think of,” he said, pulling his hand away.

“I…” Sansa was not ready to tell him about everything that happened to her in the city, but she couldn’t have him believing that she was acting weird and distant because of his leg. “You grabbed my hand,” she said at last.

“I…what?”

“I came back to Winterfell because I was running away from the city. The boy I moved there to be with… I never should’ve left Winterfell. When you grabbed my hand it… it made me think of him.”

“Oh, Sansa, I’m—”

“No, it was just my gut reaction. I wasn’t expecting it. It was what came after,” she admitted softly.

“What came after?” Jon asked, his voice just as soft as hers was.

“Butterflies. I hadn’t felt them for so long… Since before I left. They scared me.”

“Do I scare you?”

Sansa looked at him then, studying his face, comparing her memories of the boy he was to the man he grew up to be. He still had those unruly curls and grey eyes. The serious face that rarely smiled, but when he did it always made her feel like she’d won something, even when they were kids. She and Robb and Arya used to have competitions when they first met Jon to see who could make him laugh first. The only difference she could find, aside from the beginning of lines by his eyes, was his leg. And that was nothing compared to the hells she witnessed and endured in the city.

“No,” she said honestly. “It’s my past that scares me. It’s me.”

“Well, you scare me. Actually, I find you downright terrifying.”

“Me? You’re terrified of me?”

“I’ve always been terrified of you. I had a crush on you growing up. I was going to ask you out once, but then you moved south.”

Sansa felt her heart stop beating before it suddenly skipped forward in a lurching rhythm.

 _If only you had,_ Sansa thought. Then maybe she wouldn’t have moved south. Then she would’ve have gone through hell. Then maybe her parents would still be alive.

 _No,_ she reminded herself. Even if she hadn’t moved, the accident still would’ve happened. Except it would’ve been worse because she would’ve known about Jon being in the car.

She probably wouldn’t have a relationship with him now if he had.

She had to let go of the past, she realized. That anger she still had buried about the crash, the pain she escaped in the south. There was nothing she could do to change it. And if she hadn’t gone through it all, she wouldn’t be sitting across from Jon today.

“I’m glad you didn’t.”

“Oh,” Jon breathed after a long pause.

“If you had, I probably would have never left. And I probably would’ve never forgiven you for the car crash. We wouldn’t be sitting here if you had.”

Jon blinked at her.

“And… And if I were to ask you out now?”

“I’d say yes,” she whispered, feeling both a blush and a smile grow across her face.

“And if I asked if I could kiss you?” His voice was low and Sansa felt more than a blush.

“I’d say yes.”

Holding her eyes, Jon slid his chair back and walked around to her side of the table. With a slow motion he extended his hand and Sansa didn’t hesitate to place her palm in his. He pulled her up so she was standing before him, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear.

“Can I kiss you?” he murmured.

“Yes.”

And he did.

 

 


End file.
